Journal
Why intern? Get the real scoop from current interns participating in the Hemophilia Leadership Development Program.
Leslie Situ, Bayer HealthCare intern, Summer 2008
It is now March; the weather is starting to warm up and my mind starts to wonder, “What am I going to do for the summer?” Though it is a long way until summer hits, it is always a nice mind escape from midterms and club meetings, besides for many internships this is exactly when you should start looking. For me, it was difficult trying to look for internships that cater to my interest because most of them are offered to juniors and seniors in college (which I’m not), but with a bit of luck and perseverance, I did manage to find some that are interesting to me.
Finding internship opportunities is the easy part, now is the time to apply and figure out which ones you are really interested in. For me, my main objective is to apply some theories I learned from my classes and learn some skills that could not be offered in an academic setting. This also allows me to get a taste of real work from applying to working in corporate America. With that in mind, I searched for bigger corporations while making sure that the internships are paid (you’ll be surprised how many people will work for free, especially for the internships that everyone wants (i.e. MTV in NYC). Now that I have a whole list of possible openings, it is finally time to buckle down to write some short answers and polish up that resume, not to mention the interviewing skills too.
Filling out an application could be the most tedious task, especially when there’s hundreds of them and one of you. So something I would do is look through all of the applications and find some of them that have similar questions and answer those first (but remember to proofread them because you don’t want to put in the wrong name because you just copied and pasted from another answer). Applications are no fun but once I got that phone call for an interview I was thrilled. Just for that reason alone is enough to encourage someone to apply for an internship: the feeling of accomplishment and knowing people are interested in my skill sets. I won’t bore you with all the details about the interviews and paper work anymore but accepting the job offer after the whole interviewing process is definitely one of the coolest feelings in the world.
In the end, the experience of an internship will definitely make your summer worthwhile and hey, it might even give you an idea of what you want to do in life.
